


chelsea hotel no. 2

by franzferdinand



Series: new skin for the old ceremony [5]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: (say it with me), Alternate Universe, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Literary Analysis, M/M, Metaphors, Poetry, ah the dramas of being stuck in a space pub with the lizard you definitely hate, and don't love at all, and with Cardassian literary conventions, author takes liberties with Cardassian history, but it's not really relevant here, pretension, probably, spy julian, this will make no sense in the morning because
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-27 23:00:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20768372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/franzferdinand/pseuds/franzferdinand
Summary: Prompt fill for the following:"I hate you, just so you know.""Oh, darling, you break my heart.""You don't have a heart to break."





	chelsea hotel no. 2

**Author's Note:**

> This probably makes no sense as is, so let me know in the comments if anything seems really messed up. I just sort of wanted to write it while I still had the idea for what I wanted it to be fresh in my mind.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, and please feel free to drop a kudos or a comment! I'm really growing to like their relationship dynamic in this particular AU.

“I hate you, just so you know.” 

“Oh, _darling_, you break my heart.” 

“You don’t have a heart to break.”

“Now that,” Garak said, wiping the blood from his brow, “was genuinely unkind.” 

“It’s true.” Bashir sighed, leaning forward once more with the cloth in his hand and dabbing at the cut that split one of Garak’s orbital ridges himself. Not for the first time, he wished for the luxury of a dermal regenerator. “Quit prodding it. It’s already liable to get infected, all the dust and grime you kicked up.”

“That tone in your voice sounds suspiciously like you’re blaming the whole incident on me, my dear.” 

Bashir spared him a wry look. He busied himself with binding shut the cut with a little strip of medical tape. It was the last of their wounds to tend to, the last piece of evidence from a scrap that had been, to Bashir’s eyes, entirely avoidable. 

“I don’t recall it being me who threw the first punch, _in’srahi_. That honor falls on you.” 

Though there was little in the way of reaction to it, Bashir knew full well Garak understood the endearment. He should have; he was the one who introduced him to it in the first place. A brief collection of poems by a man named Siron at the very end of Cardassia’s time as an autocracy, before the councils had taken over. They were love poems, but with Garak’s prodding he had learned to see the rebellion coursing through them--they were inversions of everything a well-to-do Cardassian was supposed to be. Where the archetype was strong, eloquent, and dedicated to the state, the poet was soft, and concise, and lived only for his love.

None of this on the surface, of course. Much of it was subtext, inevitably lost in translation.The version he had read had left some of the work merely transliterated into Federation Standard, mostly endearments. He had spent a whole lunch with Garak on the meaning of in’srahi. 

Literally, it was the plural diminutive for a birdlike creature on Cardassia. Garak had even found a picture; to Bashir’s inexperienced eyes they looked like hummingbirds. In context, it had made little sense to him at first.

_I had built walls of stone and I had braced them with fear-hard metal_

_I had been safe from the ones who leave nothing but bones in their wake_

_And I had created a lock-box for the universe that was mine _

_There a life beckoned me, and it was fractal and never-ending and impossible_

_You tore the fabric that was me to pieces, you rent me, heart and soul _

_And you were careless, in’srahi, and you were cruel in your innocence_

_And by sun-up the field was drunk, godlike, on my sour blood_

_And the flowers will grow red there until the mountains crumble to dust._

_In’srahi_. A flock of birds with remarkable hearing, who spent their nights in clusters in open fields, trails, anywhere free of underbrush. An army hoping to lay siege to a city might make no more noise than a Terran field mouse, but still the in’srahi would hear them, and the flock would raise such a warbling cry that any attempt at ambush was useless. 

Bashir had thought he’d understood the whole of it, at first. Siron’s love had caught him off guard, had made all his strategy useless. Even if he had been trying to pursue them, they had laid bare all his tricks. The metaphors had twisted around in his head, confusing. 

_“I don’t understand. If the_ in’srahi_ are what defeats the invading force, why does Siron cast himself as the stronghold?” _

_Garak smiled at him over the Replimat table, no doubt trying to work out the best way to both give information and taunt Julian with it. _

_“You see, Doctor, that once it happens once or twice that an invader is given away by_ ins’rahi_, it rarely happens more. Armies learned to scatter grain where they went, to silence them. They learned to move through the trees and over the brush with the same silence. They even learned to keep the little things as pets.”_

_Julian had laughed, then, and played with the rim of his glass. “So they’d make an awful noise wherever they went? That doesn’t sound much like a strategic advantage, Garak.” _

_“Perhaps not at first, not to a mind like yours. But think about it.” Here he leaned forward, conspiratorial, and Bashir was too curious to be angry with the slight. “Birds can be trained to stay silent. An army, with plentiful amounts of them, finally manages to creep up to the walls of a city, and they wish to ambush. They wish to disorient. So they send perhaps half their men to scale the walls, easily dispatching the guards, who are dozing content in the knowledge that their ‘alarm’ has not gone off. They disperse, and they hide themselves in all the little places no one looks, and those at the gate release their_ in’srahi_.”_

_Bashir let his teeth worry a knuckle, his eyes narrow. “So they go through all that trouble just to get into the city and. . . release the birds anyway?” _

_Garak’s eyes twinkled. “So they do. Why?” _

_“Why hide, or why release the birds?” _

_“Dazzle me, Doctor. Why do either?” _

_Bashir sighed and ran a hand over his cheek, glancing at the chronometer on the wall. While Garak was still picking at his food, he’d been finished nearly ten minutes. That still left another ten for this discussion. He took a deep breath, and dove in. Perhaps he would find the logic in the senselessness if he just kept talking._

_“If they hide and then release the birds. They create confusion. Chaos. They’ve got the alarm that an invasion is imminent, but no invading force. But won’t they simply arm themselves, and hunker down for a siege?” _

_Garak simply quirked an eyebrow ridge. _

_“Okay. So they arm themselves, and they go. . . looking for them?” He straightened a little, feeling himself grasp an idea, like a spiderweb in the dark. “The_ in’srahi_ nest in fields, so they figure the invaders are outside, so they grab whatever they can get their hands on, and go out looking for the people they think are trying to hide among whatever little cover there is outside the walls.” _

_The hint of a smile in Garak’s eyes was enough to keep him going, confidence growing by the word. “They start rushing out of the gates to find a phantom army, and meanwhile, the soldiers inside the city are taking hostages. Killing. They’re being gutted and they don’t even know it. And once the city’s army is outside the walls, they follow them out, and they’ve got men on either side of them. They’d never even stand a chance.” he reeled for a moment, blinking. It was a devious little piece of strategy, and very risky. _

_Garak’s voice was quiet, but it thrummed with approval. Bashir tried not to feel like the cat that got the cream. _

_“So, then. What does it mean to call someone_ in’srahi_, Doctor?” _

_“They are. . .” he trailed off. “They are what you thought would keep you safe, used to destroy you. And you say this is a romantic endearment?” _

_“You’re close. My_ in’srahi_ is that piece of me that was chaotic that I thought I could control, until I found it in the hands of another._ In’srahi_ is the best of you that leaves you helpless, and the wild thing that gives you strength. There have been volumes written upon the subject, and not all of the nuances can be expressed now.” _

_"You, the one who has drawn me out and conquered me."_

_There was a beat of pregnant silence, and Bashir found himself looking down, uncharacteristically quiet. Cardassian poetry had that effect on him, sometimes. There was such metaphor, so many layers of culture he would have to be led through. It wasn’t a dissection where he could examine each layer carefully, declare with confidence how it fit in with all the others. It was a waterfall, a rush of everything all at once, or a fine meal, flavors exploding on his tongue before he could begin to categorize them. _

_“It is rather humorous,” Garak said, and was the familiar lilt in his voice covering a certain tenderness, or was Bashir imagining things? “--that you would immediately arrive at the more cruel interpretation._ In’srahi_ can be used as an insult between partners, though it’s rare. Some radical translators, in that context, have it as ‘beloved traitor’.”_

“Please.” 

Bashir startled, snapped back into the present by Garak’s snort. He was standing up from the bed, making his way to the small mirror that hung on the wall, presumably to examine the wound. 

“I’m sorry?” He asked, starting again at the scratch in his throat. He had meant the word to be a sting at Garak, but apparently all it had done was steal the fire from his belly, and replace it with something like regret that refused to be banished. It was striking how much nostalgia for Deep Space Nine the little memory had dredged up in him. It seemed like so long ago now, since everything had come to light, since anywhere Starfleet insignias were seen had become unsafe. They were both exiles now. It was to Garak’s advantage that he had more experience in the matter.

“I struck the first blow from our side, perhaps, but not the first blow in the fight. That Nausicaan was totally out of order, implying what he did about us.” 

Bashir stood, gathering up the makeshift medical supplies he’d managed to scrounge up. Really, they were lucky that the owner of this particular spaceport was willing to overlook a little fight, so long as the latinum still made it into his hands. “That hardly constitutes starting a physical fight. He didn’t imply he wanted one.” He put the little bottle of disinfectant and roll of medical tape into his bag and set about peeling off his sweat-soaked shirt.

“He’s a Nausicaan. They are always implying that they want violence,” Garak said, and while it might have been a drawl in another mouth, in his it was a prim little aphorism. 

By God, Bashir wanted to hate him. He wanted to spit venom and make Garak wish he had been the assassin he pretended to be for so long. He wanted to poison the honeypot. There was something in his bones that clung to Garak, that wanted just as much to love him as his rational side wanted to hate him. 

“How is it,” he replied, “that you can make your halfhearted opinions sound like fundamental truths, and the reality of a situation sound like something we can playfully dispute?” 

Garak turned to look at him, his face as impassive as ever. “How is it that your ears still cannot tell the difference?” 

Bashir just sighed, running both of his hands through his hair once he’d tugged on a sweater. Most spaceports were too cold even for him, so he knew that once again, Garak was freezing on a regular basis. When Garak did finally join him in front of the lantern’s flickering half-light, there was nothing to say. They had been so electric, when they had discussed the in’srahi. They had been learning the contours of each other still, delighting in the thrills of new love. Bashir had fallen into bed every night drunk on the dizzy combination of secrets and truths, the fear of what he knew he had to do wrestling with the irrational love that told him that anything was possible, so long as they were together. 

And if, after they finished changing into sleeping clothes, after they extinguished the little lantern, they lay down too close to each other, then it was only a matter of course. Bashir’s mammalian heat was the best way they had to keep Garak’s own blood from getting too cold. And if, after a brief eternity of heartbeats, Garak’s arms gathered his beautiful traitor to his chest, then it was for the warmth, and the warmth alone. It was only proof that all they had was each other.


End file.
